New York- Wednesday afternoon, to start

[stacyexperiment]

Gwen was pretty sure she wasn't invited on this "night out on the town" thing as some sort of consolation for not being allowed to return to school on account of being dead, but it felt that way. May had assured her that they'd find some way to get around it and had immediately gotten on the phone with Tony Stark, and how was this even her life? Then Peter had invited her out with MJ and some other people, and Gwen really didn't feel like going, but it beat sitting around the house and feeling sorry for herself. Besides, Peter had told her they were going basically because Johnny Storm had no other friends, so at least maybe she could feel weird with someone who was also out of place.

Mary Jane seemed okay with her, and so Gwen hung out on the porch with her and Peter until two others came to join them. One was a little happy-looking brunette girl, holding the hand of a bigger, bald guy. One that Gwen totally recognized as Kenny, the jerk who she'd once pulled a knife on for bullying Peter. They were friends with him now? Okay.

"Hey, hey!" the girl greeted them.

"Hey, Kitty. Kong," Peter waved.

"We're actually going out for a night on the town like real people with lives and stuff?" Kitty asked.

"How about that?" Peter asked, and nodded to Gwen. "Oh, hey, Kitty, this is Gwen Stacy. Kong-o, you remember Gwen."

"Yeah, yeah," Kenny said, "you, uh, look great."

"Yeah. You, too," Gwen tried. "You lost weight."

"You remember me?" he asked, surprised.

"Well, yeah..." She did get suspended for him, after all.

"I thought you- I thought-" Finally Kenny gave up and said, "I don't know what I thought."

And then there was awkward silence, and Gwen thought that mayvbe this was a terrible idea, and maybe it was good that she couldn't go back to school. Maybe it'd be easier if she didn't have to walk around knowing everyone thought of her as the dead girl.

They were saved by Aunt May, who came outside with her purse. "Hey! Do you have money? Here's some money."

"I have money," Peter said.

"I'll take it," Kenny volunteered.

There were the usual random bits out conversations, with MJ wondering if it was going to rain, and May trying to make sure they wouldn't get into any trouble, and then the group headed out to make their way into Manhattan.

They got on the L train, and it wasn't too crowded yet. They were a little early for rush hour, but Gwen had still ended up sandwiched kind of uncomfortably between Kitty and Kong. While she was glad they weren't one of those couples who were attached at the hip and they'd both been nice enough to her, it was still so easy to feel like the fifth wheel.

"Hey, Peter?" Kitty asked finally. "After we hook up with Johnny, what's the game plan?"

"I figure the Human Torch will get us into some hot spot, Kitty," Peter replied.

She stared at him. "You did not just say 'hot spot' and 'torch' in the same sentence."

"Yeah, he did," Mary Jane nodded, and leaned over to look in Gwen's direction. "You doing okay?"

Maybe being quiet called more attention to her, she didn't know. "Yes. No. I don't know," Gwen admitted. "With everything that's happened to me, Mary Jane..."

"Well, it's not like it could get any worse, right?" Kitty tried.

Peter was looking out the window, and took that amazing timing to say, "Uh."

They all turned to look to see what was happening outside, and all hell was breaking loose.

It had started pouring. Rain was coming down first in heavy drops, and then the skies opened up and water began literally pouring on the streets. Lightning was filling up the sky quick and often, and the group watched in horror as in two minutes, it turned into a mess of biblical proportions off in the distance. The train stopped running somewhere around Battery Park, but Gwen barely noticed except when people started freaking out about being trapped. From the looks of it, the area below them seemed pretty okay; if you looked out further, it seemed people out there had it way worse.

Manhattan had flooded, like something out of a disaster movie. Water had filled the streets halfway up buildings, and given how many people were on the streets of New York at any given moment, there had to be thousands dead already.

There was something one of them could do, which was probably why without saying a word, Kitty grabbed Peter and phased him up through the ceiling of the train, probably because there was Spider-Man stuff to do. She, MJ and Kenny knew to stay quiet, and then when Kitty dropped back down, she'd apparently decided to take charge of things.

"Okay, here's what we're going to do," she announced. "I'm going to get you out of this train and you are all going to head away from the city."

"How did you do that?" an older woman demanded, clearly freaked out. Probably more by a girl dropping out of the ceiling than by what was happening outside. "Walking through the ceiling thing? Who are you?"

Kitty was pretty thrown off by this, like it had ruined the 'this is what we're doing' speech she had in her head. "I'm Kitty Pryde, I'm-"

"Holy- you're one of those mutants!" yelled a man. "You're one of them. I saw you on the Discovery Channel."

Right now Kitty probably was regretting that her identity wasn't so secret. If anyone knew her name, they knew she was a former X-Man, which would unfortunately give people opportunity to be racist dicks at a really bad time. "Yes, let me get you all-"

"It was probably a mutant who did this!" screamed another woman.

And that was when Gwen snapped. "Hey!" she said, moving closer to get up in the woman's face. "The girl just offered to save your fat ass! How about you put a sock in your racist crap for two seconds!"

That actually seemed to calm things down a little, or at least shock them calm, enough that Kitty could actually finish a sentence. "Lady," she said, "trust me, think what you want of me and mine... No mutant did this. Okay?"

"Let's just get out of here and we can point fingers later, okay?" Mary Jane said.

"Who's first?" Kitty asked, holding out her hand.

No one took it.

She sighed, and threw her hand out again. "I can't believe I have to say this. Take my hand if you want to live!"

And so Kitty would have people hold onto her, and then she'd phase them out of the train and get them safely on the ground, usually two by two. Since no one was about to leave her behind, Gwen, MJ and Kenny waited and watched, because there wasn't really anything they could do to help out here. And Gwen really wished there was. She was getting more and more jittery. Some guy on the train had said it was the end of the world, and she was trying not to believe that it was, but...

Finally when Kitty brought out one single person, Kenny asked, "Is that everyone?"

"Yeah!" Kitty said, landing safely and letting go of the last woman she saved.

Of course, once people got on dry-ish land, they were more worried about what happened next, and Kenny yelled, "You're welcome!" at their retreating backs, going to Kitty and looking like he was half holding her up. "Are you okay?"

"Just give me a second. That was a lot of heavy lifting," Kitty replied.

And now what? Now they had to what, get back to Queens? On foot? Gwen couldn't tell you the way back to Queens on the subway without looking at a map, she had no idea how to get home. And Peter was gone, and who knew if that rain was the end of it...

The sudden sound of helicopters above startled Gwen so much that she instinctively latched onto Mary Jane, who wasn't expecting that at all. "We almost died," Gwen said, trying to stop herself from shaking.

Mary Jane tried to speak, but it was hard when you had a clingy blonde crying and trying not to go into full hysterics all over you. "We're- we're-"

"We were heading into the city," Gwen said. "We were headed into it." They didn't have that far to go, either. If they'd managed an earlier train, if maybe May hadn't stalled them trying to give them money they had no use for now, they'd probably all be underwater right now.

"We're okay, Gwen," Mary Jane assured her, hugging her back. "We're okay."

"Sorry. Sorry," Gwen said, forcing herself to pull back and wiping at her eyes. "I just don't want to die again if at all possible."

Probably not something people heard a lot of. "Yeah, uh, sure..."

"Peter went into it."

That got MJ to pause, and she looked in the direction of the city. "He'll make it," she said, but she didn't sound hugely confident.

*****

They were far enough from where things were really bad that they could actually make it on foot, and when they got as far as Brooklyn they decided to figure out just how bad things were and to make sure they were headed in the right direction. So they climbed up to higher ground and make it onto a building's roof to survey the damage.

And oh, god, it was horrific. The water wasn't very far below the bridges, there were several fires spewing black smoke, buildings were damaged, there were boats that had collided in what used to be the streets. There was also some weird purple thing lighting up the sky, but given what they were looking at, that didn't even feel like the weirdest thing.

"Jeez," Gwen murmured. That was all she had.

"I can't believe it," Mary Jane gasped.

"How did this happen?"

"And what is that purple thing?" Kenny asked. "Is that water?"

"Water isn't purple," said Mary Jane. "It looks like SoHo. That's SoHo, right? Where are the- Where's the army? Or the Ultimates? The Fantastic Four. Where is everybody?"

"They might all be dead," Gwen said, feeling sick. She didn't know how anyone would be alive out there.

"God, I hope Peter's okay," Kitty said.

Without any warning, Mary Jane hauled off and punched her.

Kitty fell, sitting up and touching her bleeding nose. "What the hell, MJ?"

"Why did you send him in there?" MJ exploded.

"I didn't!"

Kenny grabbed onto Mary Jane to hold her back, trying to get her to stop while she screamed, "You sent him in there! You sent him in there!"

She was mad enough that despite Kenny's size, she was able to pull away from him and lunge at Kitty, who luckily phased. It looked like MJ hit her shoulders pretty good before that happened, though.

"You'll never understand!" Mary Jane yelled. "You'll never understand how much I love him!"

"Of course I do!" Kitty snapped. "I love him as much as-"

She stopped herself, but it was too late. Gwen was only vaguely aware of the situation here, but of all things you didn't want to say in front of your boyfriend and another guy's hysterical girlfriend, that had to be right at the top of the list.

It got Mary Jane to stop, though, and Kitty pulled herself up, holding her shoulder. "I didn't send him," she said calmly. "He went in. He went to do what he could. Just like us. I would go in too if I could get there. If I could swing or fly. You know that. I would go, too."

Mary Jane shook her head, and looked like she was about to lose it. "This- this is... The world- This is something else. This is-"

Gwen reached for her, supporting her, because it was her turn apparently to be there when her friend was crying over this whole thing.

"What do you want me to do?" Kitty asked.

"Get him back," Mary Jane said. "Help him."

Kitty paused, then said, "You're right," and dropped down through the floor into the building.

Which left the three of them alone on a rooftop on Brooklyn, minus the only person who seemed to have any clue as to what to do.

[NFB, NFI obviously, OOC okay. From Ultimatum, because let's come to Fandom with even more trauma.]